Tairrie B Interview on The LVRS
My Ruin Singer Tairrie B on her Spoken Word Project The LVRS
Suite 101: How did The LVRS come about?
Tairrie: "It's something I've been interested in for a very long time but I never thought I'd do it because I like to have a rock band behind me. On Tura Satana's Relief Through Release there's some hidden track after the record stops and one of the tracks is this song Terror where I deliver a spoken word kind of about myself because the guys in my band used to call me Terror. So it's kind of my statement of this is who I am and what I am."
"And then in 1999 this remix team Bushaq, who actually produced some of the Speak And Destroy songs, came to me at a show and played me this remix of the spoken word track and I thought it was so, so interesting. So when I went to record Speak And Destroy I redid Terror. I took their music and I revamped the lyrics and I decided that would be the lead track from the record. Then I had another song Horrible Pain (Within My Heart) and then on A Prayer Under Pressure... we had the intro Morning Prayer and the outro Evening Prayer and I just kind of kept the series going.”
Formation of The LVRS
“Then one night with Mick, we'd had a few drinks and I just decided, hey, record me. I'd watched this really. I sat down and I tried to combine them and it was almost like I added my own little story in some way. We decided to make a record that would give us a chance to do something we hadn't done and give me a chance to tell some of my stories I couldn't tell with My Ruin. We ended up coming up with an incredible record The Murder Of Miss Hollywood.”
The LVRS - Love, Violence, Sex, Religion
Suite 101: The LVRS is also a sort of acronym – love, violence, sex, religion?
Tairie: “Yeah. There's the lovers because we're lovers but it's love, violence, religion, sex, with a death overtone. So that was basically a record about murder, about a woman being killed and her body being found and what her story was. The whole record was basically made up in my mind about the story of this woman. The second record was a year later and it was called The Secret Life Of Lola Burns. Lola Burns was a character in an old Jean Harlow movie Bombshell, made in 1933. It's one of my favourite movies and as a joke of many years I used to use Lola Burns as a pseudonym if I was out at a club and a guy hit on me – I'd never use my real name."
The Secret Life Of Lola Burns
"That record was also inspired by the suicide of Virginia Woolf. I was very much reading her at that time and so that record is kind of about a day in the life of a woman and what would cause her to kill herself. What was the awful thing. Again, I talk about a lot of issues – I address my grandmother's suicide and I address my relationship with my mother, which are not things I really talk about publicly but which have been weighing on me for many years. These records were only released for real fans of our band through the website then when I put out The Brutal Language in 2006 we were signed to Undergroove in the UK but we started our own label Rovena Recordings and we decided it was time to release a real spoken word record. I think it's a really interesting record – it's very cinematic and dramatic and soundtrack-like.”
Suite 101: Is the creation of a spoken word piece more like acting than singing?
Tairrie: “Not really. It's just talking. Light some candles, pour yourself a glass of wine and put on some headphones, sit back and listen to the stories. It's kinda scary. My spoken word records are the only records I have a lot of trouble listening to myself. They're very emotional, they're very real. I don't try to be Lydia Lunch, I'm not out to try to be Henry Rollins. I actually gave the record to Henry Rollins when I interviewed him a few years back. He said he thought it was really great but asked why I was doing it all to music. Just do it alone. I said 'that's you, that's what you do'. I need it to be a little more cinematic and dramatic. It's more intense to me when it's got a musical vibe. Plus, you know, it brings Mick and I together. It's our co-partnership and I like that. It's uneasy listening, uncomfortable.”
The LVRS New Album for 2009
Suite 101: There’s a completely new album in the pipeline…
Tairrie: “Yeah, we have a new record we’re working on right now, tentatively titled Lady Seeks The Bruise – sort of a play on Lady Sings The Blues. We’ve recorded five songs for it right now and we’re looking to record the rest of it probably early next year. Our last release was on Valentine’s Day so maybe we’ll aim for that for 2009 as well. We’ve got so many different things going on at the moment that it’s difficult.”
Click here for more from Tairrie on former band Manhole and the new My Ruin live album.
Tairrie B and Mick Murphy with My Ruin
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